


Under Ice

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Steve goes to find Fury, who also says no before Steve can get a word out. “It’s not gonna work, Cap,” Fury says. “I know you like rescuing people, but he’s a Soviet assassin with a worm in his brain and he’s in the safest place he can be.”</p><p>“I just want to talk to him,” Steve says. “Clint says he might even be close to my age. I think it would be healthy for me to talk to someone who shared an experience like mine,” he adds, deploying his best 2014 talk with almost total sincerity. </p><p>Fury narrows his eye at Steve. “Really,” he says.'</p><p>Or: despite everyone's best efforts, the thing that seems to cheer up Sad Cap the most is talking to the amnesiac assassin in the cell downstairs. And, even stranger, seems like Cap's actually managing to charm the Winter Soldier into chatting with him like a normal person.</p><p>[Not canon with the Winter Soldier film.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve is very aware that minds at SHIELD are cogitating urgently over the Captain America Problem, as he thinks of it.

Clint is their first attempt. Okay, Clint is a nice guy. He’s a fine person and all. But suddenly when Clint wants to drink beer with him and go to baseball games, Steve realizes that somebody at SHIELD has analyzed him, has labeled the void in his life with the words “sarcastic” and “sniper” and come up with an answer named Clint.

Clint, despite being a professional spy and therefore an actor, is not that good at pretending he cares about baseball. And it’s not a good feeling, because Steve actually likes Clint. But Clint is Clint, not anybody else. Apart from anything else, Clint and Natasha already have what Steve is missing.

SHIELD’s next solution to the Captain America Problem is named Sam Wilson; best Steve can figure out, this time SHIELD looked for the most good-hearted guy they had, and that guy was Sam. In spite of SHIELD’s unsubtle attempts to make Sam Steve’s friend, Sam actually really becomes Steve’s friend.  Sam doesn’t care about baseball either (although he’s frank about that, unlike Clint), but he does show Steve a TV show called _The West Wing_ and soon enough they’re watching Sam’s DVD box set together every week with pizza. It means a lot to Steve, more than he knows how to let on, although he hopes Sam knows.

But the Captain America Problem isn’t solved. Steve dreams. Of the taste of his own tears, and the whiskey, and the damp in the bombed-out bar, and Peggy’s perfume, and the numbing newness of a hurt that has now become old, worn and old. It’s like in 2013 they don’t understand _heartbroken_. Everyone just wants him to talk, but talking doesn’t make it better.

For a while, people also keep trying to set Steve up on dates with girls. Steve dodges, says no, he’s busy, he’s not interested, she’s not his type.  All of this is true.

Then Natasha thinks she has Steve figured out, or else SHIELD thinks it has Steve figured out and sends her as an emissary. She sits Steve down and tells him that she wants to set him up on a date. She pauses. She says it’s with a nice guy from accounting.

“What?” Steve says. 

“Maybe you’re not interested,” Natasha says. “But maybe you are. Don’t turn it down unless you’re not.”

“Oh,” says Steve.

“Think about it,” Natasha says.

Steve thinks about it. He thinks about it a lot. He thinks about a guy from accounting, who could be tall, short, thin like old (young) Steve, big, barrel-chested, who could be old, young, bald, friendly, smart, could wear glasses . . .

Steve thinks about himself and ultimately says yes.

Luckily the guy _is_ friendly (and young, bald, and glasses-wearing). The guy is nice. Steve likes him. His smile is sweet and his manner is open; Steve didn’t think anyone like him worked for SHIELD.

Half an hour in, the guy (Jerome) says, “You’re not really into this, are you?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Steve says. “I’m sorry; I know that’s not fair.”

“Well, I had half a date with Captain America,” Jerome says. “And you had half a date with me. It’s not bad.”

But Jerome _does_ like baseball, so they end up becoming baseball-watching-friends. Which, as Jerome says, isn’t bad. Actually, it’s nice.

So, finally, SHIELD lets it drop. Steve is allowed to keep feeling what he’s feeling, which is all he ever wanted anyway. And he has a good life, really.

And then one day he comes back from a mission with Sam and all of SHIELD’s normally unflappable agents are all a-flutter. The entire place is buzzing, people rushing to and fro, and everyone looks like they just won a big bet.

Steve looks for Natasha, the best source for an explanation, but she’s nowhere to be seen. His second choice is Clint, who’s on the archery range (of course) but explains: “It’s the Winter Soldier, man!”

When Steve is still totally nonplussed, Clint tells him a story about a Russian organization called the Red Room—the same place that Natasha turned from—and their cadre of  highly-trained spies and assassins, all brainwashed to be utterly loyal and obedient. Winter Soldier is the best of them all, Clint says: so valuable that he was kept in cryogenic sleep and only revived for the most crucial missions. He’s been around, Clint says, since the 50s at least, but because of the freezing he hasn’t aged.

But apparently, Clint says, the brainwashing stopped working a little, or something, because Natasha just turned the Winter Soldier to the side of good (heh). He’s still in SHIELD custody, being debriefed and psychoanalyzed to rid him of all the layers of psychological control, and to make sure this defection isn’t really a trap. But, as of yesterday, he’s officially a SHIELD asset.

“That’s awful,” Steve says, almost involuntarily, when Clint is done with his story.

“Which part?” says Clint.

“Brainwashing,” Steve says, thinking of all the things he’s tried to forget seeing inside of Hydra labs.  “I didn’t know that was real in 2014.”

“Well, it’s not an everyday thing,” Clint says, nocking another arrow and aiming. “The Red Room was kind of special. God even knows what exactly they did in there. Tasha says—“ he shoots the arrow and cuts himself off at the same time. “Tasha says once the Red Room gets a hold of someone, all that’s left inside them is the Red Room.”

“We all ought to have a choice,” Steve says. He realizes it sounds trite, especially in this era when everyone seems to talk about “making smart choices” all the time, especially in terms of things like ordering food, but this really upsets him. “He shouldn’t be punished if it wasn’t his choice to do anything he did.”

Clint puts down the bow and looks square at Steve. “No,” he says.

Steve goes to find Fury, who also says no before Steve can get a word out. “It’s not gonna work, Cap,” Fury says. “I know you like rescuing people, but he’s a Soviet assassin with a worm in his brain and he’s in the safest place he can be.”

“I just want to talk to him,” Steve says. “Clint says he might even be close to my age. I think it would be healthy for me to talk to someone who shared an experience like mine,” he adds, deploying his best 2014 talk with almost total sincerity. 

Fury narrows his eye at Steve. “Really,” he says.

But, ultimately, it turns out that even Fury wants Sad Captain America to cheer up, and Steve suspects nobody can think of a really good reason why Steve _shouldn’t_ talk to the Winter Soldier. It’s not like the guy’s Communist sympathies are going to rub off on Steve, or anything. And, anyway, what Steve said about talking to someone who’s almost his age is true. 

So, while a vast number of SHIELD agents watch, Steve is allowed into the Winter Soldier’s cell. The Soldier’s hands are still cuffed while Steve is there, and he’s wearing a shock collar (which quietly horrifies Steve), but the man himself doesn’t seem so terrifying. He’s just sitting on the edge of the spartan cot in his cell, knees slightly apart, shoulders a little hunched, looking at his hands (one flesh, one metal) in the cuffs, although his hair’s jaw-length and kind of obscuring most of his face. Steve gets the sense that he’s been sitting in this pose for a long time, without any reason to move.

“What do you want?” the man says at last. His voice is not loud, and a little rough, perhaps from disuse.

“Well, you’re the only other person I know who’s been frozen and come out of it alive,” Steve says, sitting on the chair (bolted to the floor) that’s one of the few other objects within the cell. “I thought maybe we could talk about the 1940s, if you were there. I missed a lot after that.”

There’s a slight shake goes through the Winter Soldier’s body, almost like a part of a laugh. The man looks up a little and then—

Steve’s heart freezes. He might not be breathing, he’s not sure. This man’s eyes look so tired, and his hair is bedraggled, and he has the metal arm and he needs a shave but—

The Winter Soldier's eyes look like Bucky’s eyes. No, everything of his looks like Bucky’s, even the hand that’s real. Steve knows.

“You’re Captain America,” Bucky says. He doesn’t say _you’re Steve_. His eyes don’t even say that.

“Yeah,” Steve says, pretending like his throat isn't tight. “You go by anything other than Winter Soldier?”

“A lot of names,” says Bucky. There’s just a faint hint of the Russian accent there, just around the consonants. “You go by anything other than Captain America?”

“I’m Steve,” Steve says.

The Winter Soldier kind of nods at this. And then his face goes distant again, like the conversation’s over.

When Steve walks out, his stomach is twisting up and he feels like he might be sick, until he sees the SHIELD agents staring at him—some of them are even smiling. “You're a charmer, Cap,” one of the psychiatrists says to him. “That’s the most he’s said to anyone but Agent Romanov since he’s come in. And the first time he’s said anything in English.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 It’s eighteen hours until Steve goes back the next day, and he lives each one of those hours in unbearable detail. He doesn’t sleep: he lies on his bed for a bit, then looks up some of the old documentary films they did about him and the Commandos, watches a bit of one of them, closes his laptop. Walks around and around his apartment like he can’t bear the confines of his room, the living room, the kitchen.

He doesn’t write anything down, but he turns it over and over in his head: Bucky fell. How could he have survived? But he did survive. What did the Red Room do to Bucky? Bucky doesn’t remember Steve. Should Steve tell Bucky who he is, if Bucky doesn’t know? Maybe it's not right, but he wants Bucky to remember it himself, so that Steve knows it's real, he's not crazy.

The next morning, the agents guarding Bucky’s cell look at Steve a little funny, but, well, yesterday was a success. Nobody says no, so he goes in.

Bucky’s sitting in much the same pose as the day before, but this time he looks up as soon as Steve comes in. His face is physically the same, but so changed: his eyes aren’t bright like they used to be, his face isn’t as vividly expressive, his mouth isn’t curling up at the corners like it always did when Bucky talked. It’s like everything about Bucky has been turned down, like a radio at a whisper—but it’s still there, Steve thinks. In some moments, it’s there.

Still. Bucky looks up as soon as Steve comes in, and Steve sits on the chair and says, “Hi.”

Silence hangs in the air for a long time before Bucky says, “Hi, Steve.”

“So. I actually thought there’d be more people in space in 2014,” Steve says, as an opening gambit. “I heard we got to the moon, but.” His mouth is dry; he wishes he had a glass of water.

“You disappointed?” says Bucky. His hair really is long.

“Well,” Steve says, lifting one shoulder. “I thought we’d all be living on Mars, or something like that. You know, flying cars.” He thinks of Howard Stark at the Stark Expo, the car that took flight just for a few seconds.

“Yeah. Seemed that way for a while,” Bucky says, going far-off, and Steve wishes he knew what exactly that look meant.

“Wonder why we didn’t get farther since then,” Steve says.

Bucky breathes out through his nose in a way that could have once meant exasperation, or amusement, or both. “We stopped competing,” he says. “My country and yours. They never told you about that?”

“I’ll look it up,” Steve says. He doesn’t say that the USA _is_ Bucky’s country. Despite what some people now seem to think, Steve’s never been an American chauvinist—when he was in the war, he was fighting with the SSR and the Commandos, who were a general Allied force rather than an American one—but he was always together with Bucky, through it all. Everything was _ours_ , not _mine_ and _yours_.

Bucky doesn't say anything more.

“Well,” Steve says, to fill the silence. “Everyone has music I need to look up. They tend to talk about history less.”

This time Steve is almost sure Bucky looks amused. “You’re Captain America,” he says. “Imagine how they feel, showing their history books to you.”

This is when SHIELD tells Steve his time’s up.

When Steve gets home, he goes on the internet and learns about the Space Race.

* * *

 Steve settles into a routine: he visits the Winter Soldier almost every day, unless he’s away on a mission. Steve never pushes, but the memories that Bucky spontaneously offers are patchy: some years he knows, while others are blanks to him. He never mentions anything before the mid 1950s. He never mentions America, or New York. He never gives Steve a name other than Winter Soldier.

“Hey, look at you,” Tony Stark says to Steve, the next time he’s dragged Steve and the others to the Tower for pizza after a fight (robots, this time). Tony has a certain kind of very intense and shamelessly analytical way of looking at Steve. “This is cute. Your blossoming BFF-ship with the Winter Soldier is clearly doing you good. If SHIELD rumors are to be believed.”

Steve knows what BFF means. “You look good too, Tony,” he says sincerely. “How’re things going with Pepper? You two set a date yet?”

Hawkeye actually spits out a mouthful of soda. Bruce covers his mouth with his hand, and then Tony shoots him a look of betrayal.

* * *

 “What do you do all day when you’re not fighting bad guys or coming down here?” Bucky asks Steve one day. They don’t put the cuffs or the shock collar on him any more, but Steve’s still pretty sure that SHIELD has a way to put Bucky down in a second if he makes a move they don’t like.

Steve reflects. “I go to the gym, go for a run, train at SHIELD,” he says. “I sketch, or read, or read the internet. Or I walk around the city, find places I used to know.” He runs his thumb over a mostly-healed cut on his knuckles from the fight the previous day. “I grew up here.”

“Here?” Bucky asks, like Steve meant he grew up in the SHIELD building.

“Brooklyn. I grew up in New York.”

 “I remember being a child in Novosibirsk,” Bucky says softly.

The best thing Steve can think of to say is, “What’s it like there?”

 “Cold,” Bucky says.

Steve thinks of a valley covered in snow. “You ever go back?”

“No,” Bucky says, even quieter.

* * *

 Natasha asks to meet Steve for coffee one day. She gets decaf, black; he gets a latte. She’s managed to find the one coffee shop in the whole of NYC that isn’t crammed with students and people just sitting there on their laptops, but perhaps it’s because this place doesn’t have wi-fi.

It’s not uncomfortable being with Natasha. She’s had his back a lot of times, and he’s had hers. Also, unlike most people, she doesn’t check her phone while she’s talking to him. He isn’t sure, though, exactly what it is that she wants to say to him.

“Have you ever heard of a name for him? A real name?” Steve asks her.

Natasha shakes her head. “I wasn’t privy to the high-up documents then, but no. Winter Soldier was what they called him. And sometimes The American, because he was the best at appearing to be an American on infiltration operations. At least, that was the reason we thought.” She wraps her hands around her coffee. “It wasn’t like SHIELD, Steve. We were programmed. He was better than the others because he was never more cruel than the programming required. But at the time neither of us was capable of thinking about each other beyond the parameters of the mission. He was my trainer, my handler. I was supposed to trust him.” She took a breath. “We spent five months together. I admired him. I relied on him, and he relied on me. When they took him away, I wanted him to come back. These are the things that I know about him.”

 “Now that he’s with SHIELD, do you . . .” Steve didn’t know quite how to say it. He thinks that, from Natasha, this might be a confession of love.

Natasha smiles in a way that, now he thinks about it, reminds him of Bucky. Or the Winter Soldier, he’s not sure which. “Do I want to go on a date with him? No. I want to work with him. I want to know who he really is.” She leans forward just a little. “Do you want to go on a date with him?”

To be perfectly honest, Steve has actually never been on a real date in his life. Dates arranged by Bucky don’t count. “I . . .” he says. He pictures going to see a movie with Bucky, going to Coney Island, going to an art exhibition (where Bucky would hide his boredom for Steve’s sake), walking around the city. Cooking dinner, playing cards, smoking out the fire escape late at night. He did all of this stuff with Bucky anyways, before, and they never called it a date.

Natasha sips her coffee.

“I don’t know what he thinks,” Steve says at last. And ain’t that the truth.

“Okay,” Natasha says, with more gentleness than usual.

* * *

 They're starting to talk about a release date for Bucky. He's been debriefed, he's given them everything he knows, they (meaning Tony) have checked over his arm, they're pretty sure he's not a sleeper agent. He's not dangerous, unless they want him to be.

"What will you do when you get out?" Steve asks him one day. "Any big plans?"

"Nothing," Bucky says, raising his eyebrows. "I mean: nothing. A whole day with no plans. No agenda. Wake up in the morning and go from there."

Steve gets it. A whole day of getting to decide what he wants to do, no mission. "Sounds like a good day," he says. "You know, you'll have to choose a name to use, too."

He says it lightly, but Bucky’s shoulders grow tenser. “So they tell me,” says Bucky.

“And I guess you’ll have to get a cell phone too—those are—“

“You know what else they used to call me?” Bucky says suddenly, his flesh-and blood fingers curling tight around the fingers of his metal hand. “ _The American_. I was the best at pretending to be American. I don’t know what that means. I remember growing up in Novosibirsk but that doesn’t mean it happened. I remember a lot of things that I don’t think happened.  It was like—like being thrown in the back of a car, duct tape on your mouth and your wrists and ankles. Someone else is driving the car, and you can hear a little and see a little from the back windows, but you can’t see all of it. You don’t know where you’re going, and you can’t remember right about where you’ve been. And sometimes you lose track. But all the while, you know you’re not driving. You just can’t do anything about it.”

Guilt starts to churn in the pit of Steve’s stomach.

“Maybe someone still knows my real name,” Bucky says. “Or where I really grew up.” 

“You were my friend,” Steve says. He didn’t mean to do it like this, but he can’t just sit and listen to Bucky like this and not say anything.

“What?”

Steve looks at the concrete floor. “Your name is James Barnes, but everyone called you Bucky. You were my friend; you fought with me. You risked your life for me. You grew up with me in Brooklyn. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before; I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

Bucky’s pale, even shaky under the fluorescent lights. “Are you serious?”

“I swear,” Steve says.

Bucky looks frozen. “God, I _thought_ I knew you, but—”

And then a bunch of agents and psychiatrists rush in, and Steve never gets to hear the rest of that sentence that he’d wanted to hear more than anything. Steve repeats his story, is ejected from the cell, and then sent to explain himself to Fury, but at least the pictures of Bucky they chase up from the archives prove Steve’s story.

Once everything’s settled down a little and everyone feels certain that Bucky isn’t going to snap from this revelation, they let Steve back in again. Bucky is still sitting on the edge of his bed, but this time he’s watching a video clip on an iPad. 

Bucky lowers the iPad, but keeps it in his lap. “You were right,” he says. Steve can tell that Bucky’s comparing Steve’s face to pictures of him from the 40s; although his hair is different, he knows he essentially looks the same. How must it feel to Bucky, seeing films of himself from the past smiling and laughing with Steve?

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” Bucky goes on. “Not at first, anyway. But you’re still an asshole for not telling me.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, and he really means it.

Bucky looks at the iPad again, and then puts it aside. “I don’t remember,” he says. “Maybe I thought you were familiar, but nothing more than that.”

“I know." Steve sits down. "Ask me anything; I'll tell you whatever I can."

And Bucky asks. About the Commandos, about their life back in Brooklyn. Steve talks, and talks, and Bucky listens.

The next day, when Steve asks Bucky if he wants to stay in Steve’s second bedroom when he gets out of SHIELD, Bucky laughs. Steve asks why, and Bucky says, “I can’t believe you just called me Bucky.”

“I could call you James.”

“No,” Bucky says. “It’s fine.” And there’s that smile, that curling-up-at-the-corners smile that Steve knows so well.

* * *

 Tony is horrifically inquisitive, Clint is awed, Natasha is impressed that Steve managed to keep the secret from her. Sam is quietly supportive.  Fury is mysterious, as always. But none of this is as important as the fact that Bucky is finally coming home.

Steve thinks it might be awkward when Bucky finally gets to the apartment, but it’s only awkward for a minute. Then Bucky wants to cook dinner, leaving Steve to wash up (and this was the way it always was, with them), and then Steve sits on the couch with a book from his stack of ‘to-read’ cultural catch-up books and lets Bucky put together the details of his room in the way that suits him (Steve went to Ikea, which is what you are supposed to do in this situation, and he built all the furniture for Bucky too). Somehow, just hearing the little sounds of Bucky doing things in the other room means more than anything. Bucky walking around in socked feet, the bed creaking as Bucky sits on it, and Steve feels something easing in his heart. 

At about eight p.m., Bucky drops onto the couch next to Steve and says, “Well, I think this is better than Novosibirsk.” His hair is still long, but he took a shower and brushed it, and now it’s tucked behind his ears. His eyes, though, are bright with satisfaction, the way they always used to be when Bucky was pleased with himself about something, and he's holding himself more loosely, more relaxed.

“I think so,” Steve says wryly.

Bucky has Steve’s iPod that he uses for jogging, and he puts the headphones on and then touches Steve’s shoulder. Willingly, Steve moves to lean against Bucky's chest and then re-adjusts his book. Steve can faintly hear what seems to be “Smells Like Teen Spirit” coming out of the headphones, but he figures Bucky has a version of the serum and will heal up any hearing damage.

Bucky starts running his right hand through Steve’s hair. Steve catches Bucky's left hand, the metal one, in his own left hand, and holds it carefully; he could read the book one-handed, but he lets it drop anyway and shuts his eyes as they settle in to one another. Bucky still smells the same—how strange, he thinks. But Steve would know Bucky just from the feel of him, like this, and the movement of his hand and his heartbeat. 

“Your music is terrible,” Bucky says, showing no inclination to stop.

“Get your own iPod, then,” says Steve, but he can't help but smile as he says it.

He thinks he’s more lucky than he could possibly have imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments! I love to read them!
> 
> I myself am somewhat asexual (I don't really care to define it exactly) and I personally have always imagined MCU Steve and Bucky's relationship this way: as incredibly close but not sexual (just my headcanon). I realized that I should make clear that the "ice" part of the title isn't to do with the asexuality - it's supposed to reflect the idea of Bucky's real self being trapped under the layer of ice that is his brainwashing.
> 
> Come say hi to me at fmowrites.tumblr.com, and if you found this fic through a rec, please tell me! I love to hear about being recced.


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